


Creeping Fears and Dangerous Books

by strangelock



Series: 30 Day Valelock Challenge [3]
Category: Dark City (1998), Sherlock (TV), The Prisoner (1967), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Memory Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangelock/pseuds/strangelock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Welcome to Night Vale, episode 3, Station Management and prompt #27, Jealousy or Insecurity from wintergrey's 30 Day OTP Challenge for the Fluff-Impaired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creeping Fears and Dangerous Books

Silence descended like a heavy curtain at the end of a tragedy, absolute and definitive. John watched as each of the patrons at Big Rico’s succumbed one by one. Sentences were left unfinished. pizza uneaten. The woman in front of John cocked her head when the man she was speaking to suddenly stopped talking, and then a shiver ran visibly down her spine. She seemed to ride it to the ground, ending on her knees, making the sign of the cross, and commencing to sway side to side, hands clasped, knuckles white.

Only John and the Hooded Figures remained unaffected. (Later, John would realize there were far more of them around than was typical.) For now, he ran and tried not to think about what he would find when he located Sherlock. 

The way it moved, from one side of the restaurant to the other, gave him hope that he could outrun it; get to Sherlock before it did. As he ran, he recalled the many nights Sherrinford —the Sherlock that Mycroft built— woke screaming before they stabilized the imprint. He said he never remembered the nightmares, and John believed him because Sherrinford wasn’t Sherlock. Not really. But the smell of chlorine would stop him dead in his tracks for days after.

Out on the streets, John dodged huddled pedestrians and slipped through cars left idling in the middle of intersections. Ahead, he saw those who had yet to be touched, some were turned towards the dead zone, curious, others remained oblivious. John’s heart gave a kick when he overtook the boundary even though the obstacles became more dynamic. He may have knocked over a Hooded Figure on purpose, although he would feign innocence later.

He finally spotted the Hospital, cutting across the grounds, straight towards the morgue and Sherrinford’s Pathology Department. John had to give it to Mycroft —Night Vale certainly saw enough strange deaths to keep any version of Sherlock enthralled.

Sherrinford wasn’t in the morgue but John spotted him down the hall when he left to check the adjacent laboratories. The good thing about hospitals is that people know to get out of the way when they see someone running. Sherrinford turned just in time to catch John’s eye, before John caught his wrist and pulled him into the nearest empty room.

‘Watson, I was just coming to find you; it’s the most incredible thing — why have you been running?’

Now that John had him he wasn’t sure what to do, how to prepare him, he wasn’t even sure he could. And he didn’t have the breath yet to try.  Instinct had told him to isolate Sherlock from the rest of the people with the half-formed thought that perhaps it was like dancing mania — a behavioral contagion or mass psychogenic illness — if he didn’t witness it, he might not fall victim.

‘What’s incredible?’ he managed, ignoring the question in favor of changing the subject.

‘The books!’ Sherrinford shoved one into John’s hands. He couldn’t open it. It was fake, a prop, looked good from the outside at certain angles, but otherwise, useless. It was about prosthetics. ‘I was referencing that book earlier today, closed it to move to another room, only it had become _that_ somewhere along the way. Another one on Rabies _growls_ when you touch it! Can you imagine what the Library must be like right now?’ He was grinning, fascinated, irrepressible.

John was still turning the prop book over in his hands, confused and distracted, when Sherrinford made for the door. ‘Will the books classified 536 be hot to the touch? 595.799 sticky and smelling of honey? I want to investigate…’ John cursed, but the door was already swinging open and Sherrinford had gone suddenly still.

John tossed the book onto the nearest surface and put himself between Sherrinford and the door as he closed it again. ‘No, no, no, no. Talk to me, Holmes.’ 

Sherrinford dragged in a trembling breath and latched onto John’s arms above the elbow; John’s immediately rose to grip forearms, using them to guide Sherrinford back towards a chair. No one let go. A blink, as Sherrinford’s gaze crept up to John’s face, released the tears that had gathered unnoticed. He was wide-eyed, and seemed to want to speak, but couldn’t.

In that moment John’s brain was reeling between a seething hatred (that Mycroft could reduce his brother so) and a paralyzing distress for his friend. Sherlock should never look so insecure, uncertain, disturbed. But then the door swung open and John heard and saw the normal sounds of a hospital behind a stunned nurse; not stunned scared, just surprised to find the room occupied. They quietly apologized and shut the door again.

‘John?’ The confusion on Sherlock’s face quickly turned to steel as his memories were quickly filed, stamped, indexed, and sorted. John could tell the imprint had slipped.

‘Sherlock.’ Relief was quickly drowned out by a whispering poison: that Sherrinford might still be held captive by the mysterious fear if the door had not opened, that John could have made things worse, not better...

Sherlock saw this in John’s face, nodded, squeezed and released John’s arms. Then he stood, let his lab coat slip off his shoulders and fall forgotten on the ground. ’I think I’m ready to go to the Library now. I want to check out the entire 631.87 section for Mycroft.’ Sherlock opened the door and turned to wait. At John’s questioning look, he added: ‘Vegetable manures and converted household garbage.’

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet is part of a larger fusion that I haven’t published yet. In short, it puts John and Sherlock, post-Reichenbach, in Dark City—in this case, Night Vale—and the Strangers—Hooded Figures—imprint people with new lives and memories as they see fit. Sherlock is one of these people. John is not. Mycroft is (working with) the vague yet menacing government agency. A creepy, characterless replica of 221b Baker Street was built in Night Vale for John and Not-Sherlock to inhabit. I publish this mostly to hold myself accountable to practicing with smallish, semi-contained fics.


End file.
